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The idiotic and expensive plans to force electric vehicles down the throats of drivers has run into an obstacle created by an law that environmentalists demanded. You can’t have electric vehicles without lithium ion batteries, and you can’t build all those car batteries without a supply of lithium, which some warn will be inadequate soon.AP reports:An extremely rare wildflower that grows only in Nevada’s high desert where an Australian mining company wants to dig for lithium should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday.The agency outlined its intention to propose listing Tiehm’s...

Relying on foreign allies for critical minerals supply instead of mining domestically would be an “irresponsible” and “dangerous” policy for the Biden administration to pursue, a top lithium executive says. Calaway was responding to a report that said the Biden administration, in a move to appease environmentalists, would focus on building a domestic industry to process critical minerals rather than exploring opportunities to mine in the U.S. Those technologies are more mineral-intensive. The International Energy Agency recently projected the world’s appetite for critical minerals could grow by as much as six times in the next two decades. A typical electric...

Driving along the Great Northern Highway through Western Australia's remote Pilbara region at sunrise is a unique experience. A landscape of gold, red and green surrounds you, the sky glows with a pink hue and the air is crisp. Underneath all that natural beauty lies the single most valuable thing to Australia — iron ore. Rio Tinto's iron ore trains stretch up to 2.4 kilometres and carry as much as 28,000 tonnes of iron ore in a single trip.(ABC News: Rachel Pupazzoni) The commodity helped shave $50 billion off the recently revealed budget deficit, it's what Western Australian Premier Mark...

For centuries, a legend has persisted across the Ozarks. Lore holds marauding Spaniards once discovered a rich silver deposit within a cave somewhere in the hills, and then sealed it shut for future mining. Several variations of the tale are told, but one notion is constant, the treasure is said to still remain hidden. Many people in South-Central Missouri have searched for this fabled lost silver mine. Some went empty-handed to their graves after a lifetime of digging. Others got so far as thinking they found the site, and even had their ore tested at Missouri S&T. However, no great...

A conservative estimate of the cost of a transition to “clean energy” is $1.7 trillion needed for mining of copper, cobalt, lithium and other rare earth and exotic metals and minerals. This transition will supposedly fuel electric vehicles (EVs) being cheaper than gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2027, and electric SUVs cheaper by 2026, according to BloombergNEF. Additionally, the International Energy Agency (IEA) in a new report found renewable installations for energy to electricity “soared to 280 GW globally in 2020, up 45% from 2019,” with “renewables (solar and wind) accounting for 90% of global electric capacity installations in 2021...

In just one year, the world’s largest lithium producers turned from cautiously optimistic about prices and very careful about expansion projects to decisively bullish on near, medium, and long-term demand for the key battery metal. The pandemic prompted many governments to commit to greener recovery and to raising significantly the share of renewable energy and electric vehicles (EVs), stoking demand for critical minerals this year. Lithium, alongside copper, has seen prices rising since automakers started pledging all-EV lineups and exponential growth in their electric car offerings. Rising immediate demand for lithium and expectations of surging demand in the longer term...

A prestigious intergovernmental organization created by the world’s advanced economies is pointing out the bottleneck in the plans to substitute so-called green energy for hydrocarbon-based energy: the availability of key minerals necessary for battery storage, wind farms, solar panels, and other gizmos necessary for the switchover. Simply put: the world can’t provide the quantity of those minerals that would be necessary, and the environmental and social impact of trying to mine them in sufficient quantities would be devastating.The cure, in other words, is worse than the disease. You can download the 287-page report here.The International Energy Agency is an intergovernmental...

Steve Hrvoich stood in the year-old valley beneath girders for the new northbound bridge on Interstate 79 on Thursday as gigantic dump trucks known as triple 7s whizzed by, hauling up to 100 tons of dirt each from the east side of the highway to the west. Crews for Walsh Construction II were a few days away from completing what Mr. Hrvoich, the construction engineering manager for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, called “the big eastern spread.” The crews moved 2 million cubic yards of earth from the eastern side of the valley, clearing space to install thousands of feet of drain...

Ecuador moves to the right and the ultra-left passes to the second round in Peru EFE International Edition 12 Apr. 2021https://www.efe.com/efe/espana/mundo/ecuador-gira-a-la-derecha-y-ultraizquierda-pasa-segunda-vuelta-en-peru/10001-4509419 Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso Wins Presidential Election Conservative banker defeats protégé of leftist ex-president Rafael Correa, setting the country on pro-business path Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso waved to supporters as he celebrated his victory on Sunday. By Ryan Dube Updated April 11, 2021 11:15 pm ET Ecuador on Sunday elected a conservative former banker and supporter of free-market policies as president over his populist opponent, setting the country on a pro-business path. Guillermo Lasso, 65 years old, received over 52% of...

Colin Freeman Sat, April 3, 2021, 5:47 AM Picture taken on March 30, 2021 shows a view of Nuuk, Greenland - EMIL HELMS /AFP Picture taken on March 30, 2021 shows a view of Nuuk, Greenland - EMIL HELMS /AFP AS elections go, it sounds rather minor-league: a contest with just 40,000 voters, triggered by a planning row in one of the most remote, inhospitable corners of the planet. On Tuesday, though, diplomats from Washington to Beijing will be watching carefully as Greenland holds snap parliamentary polls. With a total of population of just 56,000, its electorate is smaller than...

About 8500 years ago, hunter-gatherers living beside Eagle Lake in Wisconsin hammered out a conical, 10-centimeter-long projectile point made of pure copper. The finely crafted point, used to hunt big game, highlights a New World technological triumph—and a puzzle. A new study of that artifact and other traces of prehistoric mining concludes that what is known as the Old Copper Culture emerged, then mysteriously faded, far earlier than once thought. The dates show that early Native Americans were among the first people in the world to mine metal and fashion it into tools. They also suggest a regional climate shift...

The Russian Foreign Ministry has displaced a wrong map showing Pamir and Wakhan areas, located in the northern province of Badakhshan, out of Afghanistan's territory. Two days ago, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a map which indicated a path from Pakistan to Tajikistan via Badakhshan's areas of Wakhan and Pamir. The map didn't include some areas of Pamir and Wakhan as part of Afghanistan's soil. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said in an explanatory statement that the map presented on the Website was schematic and may not provide an accurate representation of national borders. However, such acts by the officials...

Full Title: When going green is dirty: Colorado's indoor cannabis farms produce 30% more greenhouse emissions than the state's coal mining industry due to electricity use and natural gas consumption, study reveals Growing cannabis indoors requires a lot of energy for lights and climate controls Many states forbid outdoor farming or require operations to be near retail outlets In Colorado, indoor pot farming's carbon footprint is over 30 percent bigger than coal mining Depending on where you are, growing an ounce of weed indoors has the same carbon footprint as burning 7 to 16 gallons of gasoline

Last September, in the arid hills of northern Nevada, a cluster of flowers found nowhere else on earth died mysteriously overnight. Conservationists were quick to suspect ioneer Ltd, an Australian firm that wants to mine the lithium that lies beneath the flowers for use in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. The clash of environmental priorities underpinning the battle over Tiehm’s buckwheat - conservation vs. green energy - is a microcosm of a much larger political quandary for the new administration of President Joe Biden, who has made big promises to environmentalists as well as labor groups and others who stand to...

President Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency in the mining industry, ordering the Interior Department to increase domestic production of rare-earth materials to reduce the country’s dependence on China. The order states, “our Nation’s undue reliance on critical minerals, in processed or unprocessed form, from foreign adversaries constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.” The US imported 80 percent of its rare-earth materials and...

A 3,300-year-old treasure trove of gold found in northern Germany has stumped German archeologists. One theory suggests that traders transported it thousands of miles from a mine in Central Asia, but other experts are skeptical. Archeologists in Germany have an unlikely new hero: former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They have nothing but praise for the cigar-smoking veteran Social Democratic politician. Why? Because it was Schröder who, together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet)...

Joe Biden signed executive orders on climate change and the environment on Wednesday. He spoke about the coal industry, saying he wants to reclaim mines that have been closed and bring new jobs to the industry that built this country. Biden stressed that the government will begin to regulate the leasing opportunities for the oil and gas industry.National reserves and communities will be protected by the government when it comes to these agreements in the future. West Virginia Governor Jim Justice discussed the future of coal jobs in the state during his press conference on Wednesday. Governor Justice said he’s...

Chinese rescuers pulled 11 gold miners to safety on Sunday, 14 days after they were trapped by an underground explosion, state broadcaster CCTV reported. Footage showed the first miner to be rescued, a black blindfold across his eyes, being lifted out of a mine shaft in the morning. The miner was extremely weak, CCTV said on its Weibo site. Rescue workers wrapped the barely responsive man in a blanket before taking him to hospital by ambulance.

BY JAMES TARANTO Friday, April 30, 2004 4:11 p.m. EDT Joe Says It Was So Remember Joe Wilson, the loudmouthed former ambassador who stirred up a kerfuffle last year by claiming that BUSH LIED!!!! when he purportedly said Saddam Hussein's Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger? Now Wilson has a book out, and it seems he's changing his story. The Washington Post reports: It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as "Baghdad Bob," who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade--an overture...

Down, down, down. In three minutes, the skip drops nearly 1,700 feet below Cleveland. Then the giant metal door swings open, and you’re deposited in an other-world, with walls, ceiling and floor made of salt. Dirty brown salt at the Cargill mine’s entrance, where the rock has absorbed diesel fumes and dust for more than 60 years. Pristine white, with glimmering flecks, at the mine’s far reaches, 3 miles north, under Lake Erie. “I look out at the water, and it’s like, man, we’re under that!” said Cargill employee Cachet Hilton, 45. Every day, the 5-mile wide mine gets a...